Antimodernism and Artistic Experience: Policing the Boundaries of Modernity

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

Thirteen distinguished scholars from universities such as Cornell,
Toronto, Indiana, New York, Rutgers, Concordia, and British Columbia
contribute thoughtful, challenging, and well- documented essays intended
to stimulate further debate over “policing the boundaries of
modernity.” Their perspectives encompass the disciplines of
anthropology, art history, media arts, international studies, history,
and visual/performing arts.

The book is divided into three major parts, each with an introductory
essay discussing the themes uniting the essays that follow. Editor Lynda
Jessup’s succinct introduction identifies key constructs and concepts.
In his introduction to Part 1, NYU professor Fred Myer elaborates on
various themes of modernism and primitivism. The three remaining essays
in the section discuss concepts of primitivism as they relate to the
artistic experiences of Native women, Gaugin and end-of-the-century
photography, and Emily Carr and the authenticity/authority of Native
traditions.

Part 2 is introduced by Cornell University’s Benedict Anderson, who,
through a clearly delineated historical analysis, sets the stage for
what he describes as the age of high capitalist nationalism within which
the arts operated. Essays by Senechal Chorney, Ian McKay, and Jessup
address the topics of folk art, handicrafts, and the Group of Seven in
terms of their relation to modernism, antimodernism, primitivism, and
artistic experience. Concordia’s Kim Sawchuk introduces Part 3. Her
enlightening observations on modernity and nostalgia are followed by the
views of her colleagues on primitivism and nostalgia in fin-de-siиcle
Belgium, Van Gogh and his Arlesian paintings, Parisian “shadows and
puppets of modernity,” and the realities and fictions of primitivism
in Sweden.

Most of the essays in this excellent collection are readable and
relatively jargon-free.